Because a requirement for students in many public relations (PR) courses is that they must pool their efforts with other students, problems may arise when good students must work with students less motivated or organized than they. One answer to this problem may be to steer the brightest PR students toward a course that integrates communication…

The techniques for effective listening can be identified by the acronym PAT, which stands for three sets of techniques--physical, attitude, and thinking. Four kinds of physical techniques promote effective listening: appropriate eye contact and normal blinking rate, facial feedback, appropriate body language, and appropriate verbal feedback. Two…

The WHO Program (We Help Ourselves) was developed to help children take responsibility for their own safety and learn to handle potentially dangerous situations that may lead to abuse. This cooperaive effort by the Mental Health Association and the Houston Independent School District involves students in three age groups: grades K-3, 4-6, and…

The paper asserts that learning disabilities is a "cherished ailment" in that so little is definitively known about the condition or about effective treatment, and further, that school systems and practitioners benefit from the large numbers of students diagnosed as LD. It is suggested that the traditional view of LD precludes alternative…

An extensive search of the literature and existing programs was undertaken to identify instruments that were being used to measure school effectiveness. Twenty-four instruments are currently available and are critiqued in this publication. Each critique reports the format and components of the instrument, its intended purpose and uses, reliability…

Currently, three theories of learning dominate classroom practice. First, B.F. Skinner's Theory of Operant Conditioning states that if behavior, including learning behavior, is reinforced, the probability of its being repeated increases strongly. Different types and schedules of reinforcement have been studied, by Skinner and others, and the…

Planned, individualized vocabulary instruction is an essential ingredient of developmental reading classes, and deserves special attention, since expanding word knowledge is the one area related to reading comprehension in which student progress can be directly observed and measured by the learner in daily or weekly increments. The two factors…

A 10-week project conducted with 12 gifted 4th and 5th grade students (10 boys and 2 girls) examined the effectiveness of the Logo computer programming language as a tool for helping students understand some basic principles of physics. Three assumptions were tested: (1) motivated elementary school students can learn both turtle graphics and word…

Noting the difficulties communication departments have in providing students with television production opportunities, this paper proposes the use of cable television public access channels as a means of overcoming those difficulties. After defining and differentiating between local origination and public access programing, the paper discusses the…

This paper deals with the primary processes of cognition in fifth- and sixth-grade children; i.e., how children this age interpret what they see and hear, how they remember it, and how they reason and solve problems. Designed to provide background information for the staff of the Skills Essential to Learning Television Project (a multi-level…

Use of low-stress algorithms to reduce the cognitive load on students is advocated. The low-stress algorithm for addition developed by Hutchings is detailed first. Then a variation on the usual algorithm is proposed: adding from left to right, writing the partial sum for each stage. Next, a "quick addition" method for adding fractions proposed by…

Three research questions were posed for a study: (1) Are there differences among the Piagetian scores of students in the various teaching majors? (2) Do students at various cognitive levels differ in academic achievement? and (3) Do students in different teaching majors differ in achievement? The population included 670 education students enrolled…

Matching teaching strategies and classroom environment to students' learning preferences has been found to be related to students' self-concept and achievement. By identifying the learning and reading style of each student, the teacher will increase the youngster's chances of being successful, thus having a positive effect on the child's…

A survey was conducted in the fall of 1983 to investigate the provision of programs for faculty in microcomputer use at 30 southern and southeastern universities whose libraries were members of the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries. Each participating university was sent a description of a 10-week set of seminars on personal computing…

The audio teleconference summarized in this report joined six state education agencies (Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas) and the National Institute of Education with experts nationally and abroad for 3 days in April 1984. Presentations summarized include (1) "The Need to Consider Alternative Delivery,"…